


So I Heard You Like Timeloops - the Fury Road Groundhog Day AU tumblrfic/headcanon collection

by bonehandledknife (ladywinter), bookwyrm, Primarybufferpanel (ArwenLune)



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Groundhog Day, Groundhog Day AU, Group ficcing?, I Blame Tumblr, Not!Fic, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Time Loop, devastation, headcanons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-09-11
Packaged: 2018-04-19 23:14:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4764635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladywinter/pseuds/bonehandledknife, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookwyrm/pseuds/bookwyrm, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/Primarybufferpanel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bonehandledknife: I randomly want to see groundhog day fic in Fury Road but have no idea what that would even look like.</p><p>Tumblr to the <strike>devastation</strike>rescue.</p><p>(Will be updated as the thread continues)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this isn't so much a story as a series of headcanons, [posted by a whole bunch of people](http://primarybufferpanel.tumblr.com/post/128721566689/fic-wishes) who are each hoping one of the others will make it into a 100k AU. I am trying to preserve the tumblr names and attribute any tags correctly, let me know if I mess up. The ones I know AO3 handles of will be added as co-authors here. Message me to have yourself/any addition I may have missed added here. 
> 
> Basically, I'll do my best, but I'll make no pretence at branching/offshoots. If you can do better, please have yourself added as co-author and do it!
> 
> _redshoesnblueskies: I’m really loving all the different options for where/for whom the cycles happen. I like to imagine they ALL happen - maybe sequentially, maybe simultaneously - they ALL happen and repeat and repeat….until they converge on the life outcome, and all the cycles cease._
> 
> __  
> **This whole fic contains within it no contradictions in that case - it ALL HAPPENS**  
> 

[bonehandledknife](http://bonehandledknife.tumblr.com/post/128539389575)

  **fic wishes**

I randomly want to see groundhog day fic in Fury Road but have no idea what that would even look like.

 

* * *

[mazarinedrake](http://mazarinedrake.tumblr.com/post/128539967435)

oh my god, here’s an idea: the events of the movie are the final day in a Groundhog’s Day loop…FROM CHEEDO’S PERSPECTIVE. 

She broke the loop by helping Furiosa up onto Joe’s car.

[how many days did she spend trying to save angharad?](http://mazarinedrake.tumblr.com/tagged/how-many-days-did-she-spend-trying-to-save-angharad%3F), [how many times did she make it to the green place?](http://mazarinedrake.tumblr.com/tagged/how-many-times-did-she-make-it-to-the-green-place%3F), [fuuuuuuck i NEED to write this](http://mazarinedrake.tumblr.com/tagged/fuuuuuuck-i-NEED-to-write-this).

* * *

 

* * *

 [primarybufferpanel](http://primarybufferpanel.tumblr.com/post/128549296839)

 Oh my god THAT’s why she’s willing to sacrifice her crew, because she’s tried any variation of telling them, of asking their help, and there’s always somehow a weak link, they’re not good at secrets, at acting. They don’t even come away from the Citadel, or her crew is suddenly replaced by Joe, or she’s taken off the War Rig, or– In desperation she tries not telling them one time, and it’s gut-wrenching, but then she gets much further, and now she has to get them killed over and over again, punch Ace off of her running board like he’s one of the Wretched over and over again–

* * *

[iphysnikephoros](http://iphysnikephoros.tumblr.com/post/128572513321/fic-wishes)

This time isn’t the first time she’s encountered the Fool, although he often doesn’t show up. The life of a bloodbag, well - “life” is the issue, isn’t it? He only started appearing after she got out of the Citadel, and at first she hadn’t paid attention, so she doesn’t really know how her choices affect his survival but she knows it’s not good. Unlike everyone else in this infinite Hell (but at least she’s doing something, at least these three thousand days have been each different, each unlike the previous three thousand - and when she says “plus the ones I don’t remember” it is hard to know if she means the blur of this endless day merging into itself or the blur of the thousands of days before, each sameness so like the previous that she forgets, she forgets) - unlike everyone else, the Fool is unpredictable.

 

* * *

[bassfanimation](http://bassfanimation.tumblr.com/post/128578400096)

 She only ever reaches the other Vuvalini once, on their final run, which is why it was so crushing when she found out that there were only a few left, and that her home was gone.  The run through we saw was the furthest she ever got, after hundreds of times watching her crew and the sisters die in different ways.  Maybe she even killed Max many times before, or left him to die in the desert.   

* * *

[flamethrowing-hurdy-gurdy](http://flamethrowing-hurdy-gurdy.tumblr.com/post/128580855643)

 And he never once told her his name.

* * *

[v8roadworrier](http://v8roadworrier.tumblr.com/post/128582605981/fic-wishes)

and the thing is, furiosa doesn’t think it’ll be the last run. she got unlucky with three war parties trailing her, she wasn’t able to kill the war boy which means he’ll show back up with a gun or a knife eventually, the fool shot angharad and now she’s fallen, gone under the wheels. she’ll keep playing along because giving up isn’t an option but she’s really just biding her time, waiting for the night to dissolve back into the walls of the citadel or a lucky bullet to land true and blot it all out.

it’s not until the sun rises and the fool come up swinging that she realizes she’s still driving. she’s still in the rig, in the light of a brand new day, and for the first time in countless days home is on the horizon

 

* * *

FuckyeahIsawthat

[#and furiosa definitely has to be the one relieving it](https://tumblr.com/tagged/and-furiosa-definitely-has-to-be-the-one-relieving-it)[#its why when she asks max about angharad she keeps going](https://tumblr.com/tagged/its-why-when-she-asks-max-about-angharad-she-keeps-going)[#because she keeps a running tally in her head](https://tumblr.com/tagged/because-she-keeps-a-running-tally-in-her-head)[#how many lost](https://tumblr.com/tagged/how-many-lost)[#how many down](https://tumblr.com/tagged/how-many-down)[#maybe its like the edge of tomorrow](https://tumblr.com/tagged/maybe-its-like-the-edge-of-tomorrow)[#every time she dies its resets if she doesnt hit a certain point time wise](https://tumblr.com/tagged/every-time-she-dies-its-resets-if-she-doesnt-hit-a-certain-point-time-wise)[#and so sometimes she just spends literal days doing nothing](https://tumblr.com/tagged/and-so-sometimes-she-just-spends-literal-days-doing-nothing)[#runs out into the desert and screams and kicks and cries](https://tumblr.com/tagged/runs-out-into-the-desert-and-screams-and-kicks-and-cries)[#shoots joe in the face with a shotgun only that restarts things sooner](https://tumblr.com/tagged/shoots-joe-in-the-face-with-a-shotgun-only-that-restarts-things-sooner)[#sets the citadel on fire](https://tumblr.com/tagged/sets-the-citadel-on-fire)[#sometimes she just sleeps](https://tumblr.com/tagged/sometimes-she-just-sleeps)[#days at a time](https://tumblr.com/tagged/days-at-a-time)[#because who cares really](https://tumblr.com/tagged/because-who-cares-really)[#and then sometimes its days of the same thing over and over](https://tumblr.com/tagged/and-then-sometimes-its-days-of-the-same-thing-over-and-over)[#she convinces max 100 times to let them back in the rig](https://tumblr.com/tagged/she-convinces-max-100-times-to-let-them-back-in-the-rig)[#sometimes shes so tired she cant remember which ones work and which ones dont](https://tumblr.com/tagged/sometimes-shes-so-tired-she-cant-remember-which-ones-work-and-which-ones-dont) (fuckyeahisawthat)

* * *

[yohunny](http://yohunny.tumblr.com/post/128655549711)

Look, he says. It’ll be a hard day.  
_I know,_ she wants to answer him. _I know it will be._

Instead she looks down at his outstretched hand and takes it… again.  
  
The circle was supposed to be broken. They had managed to escape the War Parties, the Rock Riders, the swamp… They were supposed to go to the Green Place. _They were supposed to be free._

But sacrificing her War Rig crew over and over again wasn’t enough. Losing Angharad wasn’t enough. Instead the same thing keeps happening, and it always begins with the choice Max is giving her.

She usually ends up taking his hand. She knows he’s right, it’s the best chance they got, even though it always ends with her death. Getting her throat cut by a War Boy, or Rictus ripping her out of a War Rig and throwing her in front of a car… Immortan Joe staring down at her over the barrel of his gun, a smug look of triumph in his eyes as he pulls the trigger.

Sometimes she doesn’t take his hand. Instead she, the Vuvalini, the remaining wives and Nux drives as far out onto the Plains of Silence as they can get before exhaustion takes her, she closes her eyes and wakes up in front of Max, his hand stretched towards her. Max, who always stays behind, she can never make him stay with them. Doesn’t mean she’ll stop trying, but most of the times she ends up taking his hand.

_Don’t blow my engines,_ she cautions Nux, but in a way she almost wish he will. Those times, when the War Rig sputters to a halt and is overrun by Polecats and War Boys, it ends quickly. It hurts to hear Capable’s sobs as she’s pulled away from Nux’s bleeding body on the sand, it hurts to see the lost look in Toast’s eyes as she seeks Furiosa’s guidance – _should we fight? Should we give up?_ – and it angers her beyond words to meet Joe’s eyes over the barrel of a gun before everything turns black and she has to start over.

It hurts, but at least it’s over quickly, those times.

She has tried different approaches; the Valkyrie in the back of the rig, Max on a bike together with Keeper of the Seeds, the wives hidden down in the hatch. She even asked Max to drive, to everybody’s surprise, but that didn’t work either. The War Rig is as much a part of her as her metal arm; it needs to be _her_ driving it. She tried arming the wives, but quickly learned not to give them any reasons to put themselves in harms way. Losing Angharad that way was enough.

_Look. It’ll be a hard day._

Despite the setbacks and deaths and the pain she learns something new every time, inch by inch they get closer to the mountain pass. By now she knows the key events that needs to happen; the right moment to take out Slit, making sure to mention where the boltcutters are so Max can cut off the plows, when to brake just so the Polecat attacking Max will fly off the rig.

There are losses. There are always losses. Nux getting shot while crawling out on the hood of the War Rig, a surprised look on his face as he slumps over, like he can’t believe that he’s been aiming for a glorious death his entire life and _this_ is how it finds him. The Valkyrie getting a harpoon through her back before being yanked straight off the bike, spending the rest of the chase being dragged behind a pursuit vehicle.  
Then the Dag tried to save Keeper of the Seeds. After that time Furiosa spent many days riding out onto the Plains of Silence, trying to get the memory of the remaining girls’ heartbroken sobs out of her head. The next time she took Max’s hand she made sure to tell the girls that they all needed to stay in the back seat, no matter what.

Despite the progress she’s making she realises that there’s something that makes an already hard task damn nigh impossible: _that fucking Polecat._ Dollface, as she’s begun to call him, _cannot_ be predicted.  On those times when everything else goes right, when she gets real close to the mountain pass, he always shows up in an entirely new place and finds a new way to ruin everything. She’s not sure if he also re-lives the same day over and over - he never speaks, not once - or if he’s just a loose bolt rattling around randomly in an otherwise smooth-running engine.

Most of the times he goes after her, and she’s lost count of how many times she’s met his angry red eyes before everything turns black and she has to start over. But he has also climbed into the undercarriage of the rig - she doesn’t know what he does to Nux, all she knows is that suddenly the remaining engine will grind to a halt. Other times he picks off the remaining Vuvalinis, one after one, leaving the War Rig defenceless. Even when Dollface gets killed, like the time when Max, with a bolt sticking out of his forehead, embraced the Polecat and threw them both in front of the People-Eaters car, he always manage to do so much damage that they’ll eventually get overrun and stopped. Furiosa will be shot or shredded, and then she’s meeting Max’s unwavering gaze back in the desert again and has to fight not to tear up. Sometimes it’s extra hard.

So when Dollface crawls up behind her and plunges the knife deep into her side, she howls with shock and pain but not with outright surprise. He got her once again, and with _her own_ bone-handled knife this time, no less. It had been a hard day. It was always hard to see the Vuvalini fall, to see Toast being whisked away to the Gigahorse kicking and screaming. Still, she had had a good feeling about this one.

She can feel Max slipping through her grasp and she screams; the first time he fell down the side of the War Rig she was unprepared, but since then she made a vow to never let him fall again… but he’s kicked onto the hood of the People-eaters car by Nux.  
Nux, who’s still alive during this run. Who can take the wheel while she goes after Joe. She knows she’s bleeding out and doesn’t have much time left, but what the hell, she might as well try and make it as far as she can.

She makes it far. Even though Dollface is dead, got a bullet planted through his eye by a dying Keeper, she hasn’t gotten this close before, don’t know what will happen next. It’s like everything… _fits_. Cheedo helps her up on the Gigahorse. Max and the remaining Vuvalini keep Rictus occupied. Her sight is beginning to get hazy and she has to hurry up, knows she’s running out of time, headbutts the remaining Imperator and climbs towards Joe. He draws his gun, but Toast makes an attempt to grab it, and while he’s distracted Furiosa attaches the grappling hook to his mask. She meets his eyes, and for the first time in a long, long while there’s no triumph in them; there’s contempt, and rage, and a hint of fear.  
“Remember me?” she asks hoarsely.

_Let it be enough,_ she thinks as she lies in the back of the Gigahorse, every breath as painful as getting stabbed all over again, barely aware of the on-going blood transfusion. _Let it be enough that Joe is dead. That Max is taking them home. Please, let it be enough._

When she opens her eyes again she’s not standing in front of Max out on the Plains of Silence. She’s lying on her back, a concerned Capable holding her hand as they’re approaching the Citadel. It is a battered, bruised and grieving group that surrounds her, but their relief that Furiosa is alive is obvious. She tries to find her own grief, but right now she only feels numb, not sure that she can trust that this will last.

The events unfold in front of her in a daze. Joe getting pushed off the hood. The hesitation before the lift is lowered. The chanting and singing and celebrations. As the lift ascends from the ground her numbness begins to disappear, and she realize that _this is it._ The circle is broken. For the first time in ages, she doesn’t have to steel herself for the oncoming pain and death and loss. She can feel victorious. Joy.

That’s when she catches a glimpse of Max, still on the ground. He meets her gaze and nods, and she gives him a weary smile before he disappears in the crowd.

She can never make him stay with them.

* * *

 

[bassfanimation](http://bassfanimation.tumblr.com/post/128578400096)   


[OH GOD](http://bassfanimation.tumblr.com/tagged/OH-GOD), [WHYYY](http://bassfanimation.tumblr.com/tagged/WHYYY), [she can never make him stay](http://bassfanimation.tumblr.com/tagged/she-can-never-make-him-stay), [SCREAMS INTO THE VOID](http://bassfanimation.tumblr.com/tagged/SCREAMS-INTO-THE-VOID), [but wait there’s more](http://bassfanimation.tumblr.com/tagged/but-wait-there%27s-more), [what if in one of those versions](http://bassfanimation.tumblr.com/tagged/what-if-in-one-of-those-versions), [Furiosa tells Max she loves him](http://bassfanimation.tumblr.com/tagged/Furiosa-tells-Max-she-loves-him), [and he doesn’t remember](http://bassfanimation.tumblr.com/tagged/and-he-doesn%27t-remember),[even that wasn’t enough to make him stay](http://bassfanimation.tumblr.com/tagged/even-that-wasn%27t-enough-to-make-him-stay), 

* * *

[bonehandledknife](http://bonehandledknife.tumblr.com/post/128692097015)

 What. Make him stay?? That would probably make him run faster, especially given the ‘I just known you for _three_ days’ thing and ‘who is this wierdo’ and ‘wtf is there about me to like, they’re clearly looking for something’ and ‘what the hell kind of person even _says_ those things’, and y’know, instant escalation of doubt and distrust.

* * *

[bassfanimation](http://bassfanimation.tumblr.com/post/128694172706)

 But what if more things happened in one of those runs than just what we saw.  Is what I’m getting at. 

* * *

[fuckyeahisawthat](http://fuckyeahisawthat.tumblr.com/post/128716914975)

 But wait…what if the new loop doesn’t restart with him offering her his hand on the Plains of Silence? What if it starts with “can I talk to you?”

That means she’s had endless versions of this conversation. That little half-smile she has on her face when he says “I’ll make my own way” is because she already knows he’s going to say that. _Because he says that every time._

Maybe she learns that if she’s too honest about wanting him to stay, it scares him off and he doesn’t come back the next morning. In some of those versions, they ride across the salt until they run out of food and water. In others, someone figures out they have to go back–maybe Furiosa figures it out herself, or Val suggests it, or Toast does, or Nux and Capable have been talking on the back of their bike and come up with the idea. But it never works without him there.

Then, one time, almost by chance, she says the right thing and he catches up to them the next morning, and they get much further, and she realizes, _oh_. She can never make him stay, but if she’s cautious and lucky, he’ll figure it out himself and come back to her. It’s still a hard day, a really hard day, and she does it hundreds of times over, and she always dies, but slowly she learns all the other pieces that have to fall in place.

She doesn’t realize until the last time through that the reason he needs to be there is not as an extra fighter, although that helps, but so he can give her his blood and keep her alive to reach the Citadel. Because the part at the Citadel never works without her.

And she still can’t make him stay.

* * *

[redshoesnblueskies](http://redshoesnblueskies.tumblr.com/post/128718190034)

 ….I hate all of you.

And every so often, she says/doesn’t say just the right thing under the blazing stars in the safe shadow of the war rig.  And he does come with them, even though he knows it’s probably fatal; he’s given up hoping for any other outcome than death, and he’s okay with that - in the company of these people he’s okay with letting go of hope.  

So gradually - as they ride for days across the glaring salt, spend nights cold under the thousands of cold stars - his guard comes down.  And gradually - in quiet minimal conversations over water-breaks in the desert, watching meteors leaning back on the sand - she gets to know him.  She gets the opportunity to value him for himself, not just for his abilities or his strength or his damage.  And day by day she gets to see him heal, just a little, in the quiet companionship of everyone around him.

And then they run out of water.

And she’s standing behind him, as he tucks away his map, in the sheltering dark of the war rig, carefully crafting the words she’ll say this time.   _This_ is the moment, this is the fulcrum, this _must_ be where she can change the outcome to life rather than drying to husks in the desert sun…but words that make him stay end in that outcome, words that make him come with them end in that outcome; and she doesn’t know, she can’t imagine what this fulcrum moment hold within it that will bend their destinies to some future without endless circling back through death to past-life to death again.

And this time, in her despair, she doesn’t bother bargaining with him or needling him or soothing him or gentling him or any other other strategies she has tried over the cycles.  And when he chases them down over the hot salt…he has a plan.

And this is utterly new.

* * *

[fuckyeahisawthat](http://fuckyeahisawthat.tumblr.com/post/128719345950)

 god damn you

* * *

[primarybufferpanel](http://primarybufferpanel.tumblr.com/post/128721566689)

 There’s one version–

There’s one loop. A loop where he leaves with them across the salt. They keep to their course, and they get to know each other, and they save their water and their fuel and they balance it, speed before they run out of water and steady before they run out of fuel. They gentle to each other, and he speaks more and she touches more and Valkyrie holds them together when she can’t, and they manage it. They reach a new green place.

The cliffs are high, and they have to keep going around, until they find a place where they can go up onto the green. There is a weathered sign saying ‘Tapotupotu camping place’

There’s sweet water and green and they cry like they didn’t know their bodies still could. They have made it. They set up camp on the bank of the stream and can’t comprehend their fortune. It takes a long time to fall asleep that night, she, Max and Valkyrie curled around each other.

When the loop resets and it’s dark and desert and Furiosa feels herself form the words ‘Can I talk to you?’ she holds them back. Walks into the desert instead and screams at the sky for the next three loops. She wonders why it could not have been that loop, that version, that stuck. And then she hears Max say _'If you can’t fix what’s broken, you’ll go insane'_

 

* * *

[inthroughthesunroof](http://inthroughthesunroof.tumblr.com/post/128724179645)

 

_I’ve been following this thread with great fascination! I started thinking about what would happen if the loops begin much earlier and only happen when specific conditions are met, and realized it starts resolving backstory questions in interesting ways. Here is an opening bit:_

 

The first time Furiosa runs away from the Citadel is seven days after her mother dies. She doesn’t have any time to prepare, she just sees her chance, kicks a war boy in the crotch, and fangs it for the horizon. On foot, no water, no weapons. She sprints through the crowds of the wretched, faster than the war boy, trying to plan. She has no supplies. Even if she can outrun them, she can’t survive in the desert without a few tools.

She trips over a wretched woman and they both go sprawling, and the answer presents itself - the woman has a knife tucked into her belt. She grabs it, jumps up, and runs on, ignoring the woman’s yell. The wretched have very little - she may have just taken a survival tool that meant as much to that woman as it now does to her. She doesn’t let herself think about it.

She takes an empty water bladder from another wretched. Furiosa knows how to collect water in the desert from dew or from plants, all Vuvalini do, it’s slow but she can do it.  She runs into the desert until she hears motorbikes - the war boy and friends, coming to find her. She scrapes frantically at the side of a dune and curls up where the wind will pile more sand against her, and it works. They go past her.

That afternoon, a storm blows in. With no water supply and no shelter, she does not expect to survive it. _I’m coming to find you, Mother._ She thinks as the dark sand closes in and her world shrinks down to her body, her knife, and the water bladder. She’s not sure if it’s sleep or death that takes her.

 

She wakes up in the breeder’s pens in the Citadel. She blinks, confused, and then shakes her head vigorously. _Hell of a dream, Fury._

The day plays out exactly like her dream, as best she can remember. The same war boy - she remembers the motorcycle chain carved into his skin - takes her from the breeder’s pen and past an open staircase that leads down. She can smell fresh air coming up it, and she almost kicks him again.

She doesn’t. Her mother’s last words were that she would protect her, even after death, and Furiosa isn’t going to disregard her warnings. The war boy takes her on to the healer, a man with a shock of white hair who laughs at his own jokes and looks between her legs. No-one’s looked there since she was old enough to bathe herself. She bites her lip and reminds herself to wait. The storm hits the Citadel that afternoon.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> more of the community story...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning: implied rape mention

[primarybufferpanel](http://primarybufferpanel.tumblr.com/post/128721566689/fic-wishes):

There’s one version–

There’s one loop. A loop where he leaves with them across the salt. They keep to their course, and they get to know each other, and they save their water and their fuel and they balance it, speed before they run out of water and steady before they run out of fuel. They gentle to each other, and he speaks more and she touches more and Valkyrie holds them together when she can’t, and they manage it. They reach a new green place.

The cliffs are high, and they have to keep going around, until they find a place where they can go up onto the green. There is a weathered sign saying ‘Tapotupotu camping place’

There’s sweet water and green and they cry like they didn’t know their bodies still could. They have made it. They set up camp on the bank of the stream and can’t comprehend their fortune. It takes a long time to fall asleep that night, she, Max and Valkyrie curled around each other. 

When the loop resets and it’s dark and desert and Furiosa feels herself form the words ‘Can I talk to you?’ she holds them back. Walks into the desert instead and screams at the sky for the next three loops.

 

____________________

 

[inthroughthesunroof](http://inthroughthesunroof.tumblr.com/post/128724179645/fic-wishes):

The first time Furiosa runs away from the Citadel is seven days after her mother dies. She doesn’t have any time to prepare, she just sees her chance, kicks a war boy in the crotch, and fangs it for the horizon. On foot, no water, no weapons. She sprints through the crowds of the wretched, faster than the war boy, trying to plan. She has no supplies. Even if she can outrun them, she can’t survive in the desert without a few tools.

She trips over a wretched woman and they both go sprawling, and the answer presents itself - the woman has a knife tucked into her belt. She grabs it, jumps up, and runs on, ignoring the woman’s yell. The wretched have very little - she may have just taken a survival tool that meant as much to that woman as it now does to her. She doesn’t let herself think about it.

She takes an empty water bladder from another wretched. Furiosa knows how to collect water in the desert from dew or from plants, all Vuvalini do, it’s slow but she can do it.  She runs into the desert until she hears motorbikes - the war boy and friends, coming to find her. She scrapes frantically at the side of a dune and curls up where the wind will pile more sand against her, and it works. They go past her.

That afternoon, a storm blows in. With no water supply and no shelter, she does not expect to survive it. _I’m coming to find you, Mother._ She thinks as the dark sand closes in and her world shrinks down to her body, her knife, and the water bladder. She’s not sure if it’s sleep or death that takes her.

 

She wakes up in the breeder’s pens in the Citadel. She blinks, confused, and then shakes her head vigorously.  _Hell of a dream, Fury._

The day plays out exactly like her dream, as best she can remember. The same war boy - she remembers the motorcycle chain carved into his skin - takes her from the breeder’s pen and past an open staircase that leads down. She can smell fresh air coming up it, and she almost kicks him again.

She doesn’t. Her mother’s last words were that she would protect her, even after death, and Furiosa isn’t going to disregard her warnings. The war boy takes her on to the healer, a man with a shock of white hair who laughs at his own jokes and looks between her legs. No-one’s looked there since she was old enough to bathe herself. She bites her lip and reminds herself to wait. The storm hits the Citadel that afternoon.

 

____________________

 

bonehandledknife:

She doesn't know what resets it, she doesn't know how it gets decided when she gets a new point to restart. She could loop a single day for twenty days and on the third day she turns left instead of right and for some reason she could continue. It's aggravating beyond belief. 

Some days she gets close enough to Joe again, a hand on a lance that is aimed at Joe's face, a rock fall timed perfectly, an explosion in the Vault.

She blinks and finds herself back again when that happens, and she grows almost bored with it, almost numb with it, picking fights with warboys until she could anticipate them, and letting herself die when she fails because everything is pain. A solid three dozen loops just trying to see how many different ways she could kill someone with one hand. Another three dozen with just her stump.

  

primarybufferpanel: 

Some days she just walks out into the desert with a waterskin, dragging out her own death because having a few days of agonising quiet is better than eating a bullet and being right back at the start.

 

bonehandledknife:

Almost inadvertently she finds herself one day given the War Rig and Joe stands in front of her and congratulates her, and Furiosa holds her chin up at him like she always did and he looks at her with some light of recognition in his eyes. He asks her to come closer. 

So she does, and he calls her by his petname for her and lays a familiar hand on her hip and she threads her mental fingers against his face. 

And then rips it off.

She's immediately set upon by warboys but that loop she dies with a smile.

The next one?

She bows her head. And he waves her off, uninterested.


	3. Chapter 3

[ciiriianan](http://ciiriianan.tumblr.com/) asked:

But what if it was Ace's groundhog day?

[bonehandledknife](http://bonehandledknife.tumblr.com/) answered:

oh my god. Right.

I’ve never seen a groundhog day for someone who’s not the protagonist. Who can’t actually change the course of the day.

‘What if he says something different this time? Would she trust him _now_?’

* * *

[primarybufferpanel](http://primarybufferpanel.tumblr.com/post/128861294804)

He’s tried anything he can think of. He still doesn’t know why she’s so tense at the start of this run. Why she looks like she’s barely slept. She’s like this every loop, and he knows the key is - or ought to be, at any rate - finding out, but even bringing her a cup of bean tea in the quiet before the Immortan comes up to speak has no results. Only makes her face look more grim when she looks at him. 

There’s some kind of terrible burden, something that makes this all worth it to her, and he still hasn’t figured out what it is. So he goes through the motions, salutes the Immortan, rides on top of the rig as they head out. Pretends to be suprised as they go off the road, at least for the others. Tries yet another approach with the Boss. 

“Boss, we’re not going to Gastown?”

Tries to meet her eyes. _Come on, look at me.  
_

_You can tell me the plan.  
_

_I’m your Ace, just give me the specs, Boss_

* * *

_[bonehandledknife](http://bonehandledknife.tumblr.com/post/128861824480) _

The worst times are when they never ride out. Ace never knows what he does to cause it to happen, if he turned at a wrong tunnel, if he spoke just the wrong word.

But their Imperator would disappear the night before.

And Immortan Joe tells them, “The War Rig will have a new Imperator.” And they know not to ask.

Some of these loops the Ace lives only until the next run, when the new Imperator gets them all blown up, some of these loops for many thousand days after. In none of them does he see Furiosa again.

(What he doesn’t know is that these loops, they reset when she dies.)

* * *

[primarybufferpanel](http://primarybufferpanel.tumblr.com/post/128864592514)

He sees the storm looming huge, feels the rig roar as she fangs it, aims them straight into it. Knows the remaining boys on the back will die, just like they have hundreds of times before. 

“Boss! Let me help you!” he shouts over the bellowing noise of storm and engines. “I don’t care what the plan is, let me help! Don’t make me do this _again!”_

She looks him full in the face, and he has never seen her look as shocked as she looks right now.

* * *

[bonehandledknife](http://bonehandledknife.tumblr.com/post/128866226190)

[COVERS MOUTH AND SHRIEKS]

The next loop, he says it earlier, and she hushes him, crowding him around a corner as if suddenly large, suddenly massive, suddenly sandstorm and desert waste all in her eyes and metal around his throat. She looks at his face and Ace doesn’t know what she’s looking for.

“You remember this loop.” She says finally.

_This_  loop?

“Mostly.” and her eyes are ancient, “you don’t.”

This time, he helps. He caught the warboy before he reaches the cabin and ended him quickly, but… eventually found himself overwhelmed when five Imperators boarded the Rig from Rictus’ ride.

His last sight was of the white wreathed women being dragged out of the cabin and handed over to the Immortan.

The last sound he heard was the silence when Furiosa’s screaming being abruptly cut off. 

* * *

[primarybufferpanel](http://primarybufferpanel.tumblr.com/post/128867111169)

They figure it out. It takes what feels like hundreds of loops. He takes out the feral. Ace drives while she shoots at the Rock Riders. After many loops of dying in the salt flats they work out that they need to go back. He defends and works with the desert women and it’s good, this is what he’s supposed to be doing, he gets a sense that he’s in the right place. And then one time they _make_ it, they block the pass behind them and they’re still alive - well, barely, Furiosa is fading and he stabs her to let her lung reinflate and then–

He would gladly bleed himself out to save her, but his blood is toxic to her. _Should have kept the bloodbag alive_ , is his last thought before the loop resets.

* * *

[bonehandledknife](http://bonehandledknife.tumblr.com/post/128867922860/but-what-if-it-was-aces-groundhog-day)

The thing is though, when Ace tries to handle the bloodbag, the feral is edgy and untrusting and lashes out like the mindless creature he is. Ace can’t figure it out, and finds the loop restarting earlier and earlier as his frustration mounts and the feral rises to meet him, and ruins everything.

One loop, Ace finds himself tired, begs off the trip, wanting some time to just run through his memories and _think_. When the war cry rises up in the Citadel, Ace rises slow, with some vague thought that he might be able to help the Boss somehow from the war parties.

Except he could only watch with distant horror as that warboy, _again that warboy_ , takes the clear shot and a spray of blood flies up. The War Rig swerves.

Gets overrun.

And Ace wakes up again.

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Get Out Alive](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4765703) by [ScreechTheMighty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScreechTheMighty/pseuds/ScreechTheMighty)
  * [If you can't fix what's broken...](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4786466) by [solitary_mushroom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/solitary_mushroom/pseuds/solitary_mushroom)




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